


The Aberration of Contact

by Fluffifullness



Series: Trope Bingo Round One - Multifandom [7]
Category: Durarara!!, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Community: trope_bingo, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-09
Updated: 2013-03-09
Packaged: 2017-12-04 19:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/714279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluffifullness/pseuds/Fluffifullness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shizuo feels that touch tingling throughout his body long after the informant's fingers have left his daemon's smooth fur.</p><p>(Slight AU - daemons; written for trope_bingo 2013)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Aberration of Contact

**Author's Note:**

> My second trope_bingo fic for the second line! And - the first AU I've ever written! Literally! ("au: daemons" was, of course, the prompt for this one)
> 
> You can consider the story as largely canon aside from the daemons. It wasn't intended as a crossover or anything, and while I did read the first book in Pullman's His Dark Materials, that was a very long time ago. To write this, I had to do some quick internet research (three cheers for Wikipedia and Fanlore!), so I hope you'll forgive any slight inaccuracies. (Concrit, anyone?)

Orihara Izaya shouldn’t be this twisted – no, dammit, not even Izaya, not anyone. He should be a petty informant, a manipulative bastard who still adheres to the rules that people all over the damn world have accepted as wholly necessary.

He’s secretive, sure, and he goes to great lengths to keep his dæmon hidden from prying eyes whenever he can help it. That’s eccentric in itself, but it’s hardly taboo. (Even if half the other shit he pulls _is_ , to some extent. Hell, if it’s not taboo, it’s at least a real pain in the ass.) Shizuo has always hated the informant, but he was able – at least at first – to tolerate him because he told himself that the bastard was simply a closed-off sort of person.

(And not also a fucked-up, stalkerish bastard with a God complex verging on clinical insanity.)

Shizuo is, too – closed-off, that is – but it’s not quite the same. Shizuo doesn’t interact well with others. Izaya does; he simply chooses to keep that barrier between himself and the rest of the world, to go to such great lengths to hide the flame-red fox from anyone who ‘doesn’t need to see’ him. Hell, Shizuo’s known the informant for a long time now – unhappily – and he’s still not even sure what his daemon’s name is.

 _His_ name. Which is the other strange thing, of course, and perhaps a large part of the informant’s reason for hiding his other half.

Shizuo doesn’t prefer to think deeply about shit like that, though. It doesn’t matter much to him whether or not the flea adheres to the usual standards of normalcy. It’s not like he’s the only one walking around with a dæmon of the same gender, and besides – Shizuo’s not exactly normal, himself. His dæmon is, but what the hell does that matter when the man himself has strength on a level that modern science can’t even begin to understand?

(So, no, Izaya doesn’t have to be normal. He doesn’t have to heed those standards. Just the rules. If he’d just stick to the dos and the fucking don’ts, the problem Shizuo has would be ever-so-slightly less.)

That, Shizuo’s dæmon – a mouse that he likes to call ‘Chou’ – isn’t what most people usually expect of the infamous, vending machine-chucking bodyguard. Chou is petite, shy, and the form she’s settled in hints at the low self-confidence that Shizuo, at least, knows he suffers from. He gets a lot of crap for it, and that’s only ever made controlling his temper that much more difficult. He sometimes wishes that his dæmon could’ve settled in a more, say, _robust_ form, but, then, it wasn’t his decision to make, and he does realize that it suits him better than any of those people could possibly guess.

Izaya actually says something to that effect, the day he interrupts one of his and Shizuo’s little street fights.

“You know, you must be a gentle person after all, Shizu-chan.”

Stops running, turns and faces his adversary. Reaches forward and gently strokes Chou – just one side of his pinky finger brushed gently down her back, but that alone is enough to constitute an offense that even Orihara Izaya – even that sick, twisted bastard – shouldn’t be so willing to commit on a simple whim.

It’s too much, too intimate. Wrong – especially coming from this guy, all secrecy and reservations that protect him in his line of work. Because touch is not that simple, dammit, it’s not something you just _do_. Not to Chou, not to the dæmon of a hated enemy. Wrong, because Shizuo feels that touch tingling somewhere deep inside of him even hours later, feels it stirring up buried emotions and exciting something that should have lain dormant forever. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s something else at the same time.

It puts him in a really bad mood – for a long time, for days and weeks and all with no sign of the flea – and at some point not even Chou knows exactly what it is that has him so on edge.

He can’t forget about it, though, and the next time he and Izaya meet in the streets of Ikebukuro, that twisted man’s dæmon lacks his usual belligerence. He approaches Shizuo – Chou still riding on his shoulder – and sits down, dog-like, in front of the blonde. Cocks his head to the side and Izaya behind him fixes his ruby-red eyes on the three of them. Smirks, extends a hand, and murmurs something about another touch.

And Shizuo, tingling all over and maybe a little insanity mixed up with the familiar fury, takes a hesitant step forward. He accepts the informant’s hand and his crazy offer, and so begins one of the more twisted chapters of his life.

Twisted and happy, he eventually decides, but for now it’s insanity, pure and simple.


End file.
